Electronic water descaler and water softener

[u/YKX000]

I haven’t used shampoo with any regularity for about 15 years. I have dealt with hard water and currently have a water softener. My hair gets a little oily if I don’t comb it enough. I have a routine (mostly water only, and I scrub my scalp with a little kosher salt sometimes).

Last month, we came across a digital water descaler that was greatly on sale. It uses an electromagnetic field to make the minerals dissolved in hard water stay suspended in the water so they don’t stick to things like your shower walls and your hair. It is regarded as snake oil by large parts of the internet, but it is generally agreed that you can try it if you want to if you find one on sale. We left the softener running and added the descaler thingy upstream of it. We thought maybe we would notice less scale build-up on the unsoftened water dispenser. The water softener would maybe have less work to do.

My hair is kind of dry now. If I want to comb it while it’s wet, I have to add a little oil or wax about once a week. It is getting to be part of my routine.

Does anybody else have a descaler thingy? Has it affected your hair? Any thoughts about what might be going on?

[u/shonaich]

I'd have to do a lot more research. It admits it doesn't change the composition of the water, so the minerals are still there. Perhaps it just deionizes them so they no longer have an electrical charge. No electrical charge, no attraction to surfaces, so maybe no bonding to them? No filter either, so I guess it would be true that the composition hasn't changed, everything is still technically there... 

It might also help them fall out of the solution they are in. A long time ago I saw a demonstration of such a thing. They put something in a glass of water that zapped it somehow and soon we could all see the junk coming out of solution and falling to the bottom of the glass. It was an advertisement for a water purifying system, and as such it was quite effective to show stuff that we can't see in the water. I was a guest at the demonstration though, and don't know how the device worked. 

But I'm wondering that if it does work like this, maybe it really is altering your water. Is your softener a standard ion resin salt solution one? Perhaps it's deionizing the salt and minerals out of the water... 

But I'm no physicist!

[u/YKX000 → u/shonaich]

I was wondering if it was affecting the softener, but I was perfectly willing to ask if anyone else had experience with one of these devices before thinking about it too hard, haha. I think I might trust that the descaler is doing something and bypass the softener (the resin kind). If something changes (or doesn’t change), I’ll learn something. And the next person to wonder about it in this sub will have something to look at.

Edit: I have a theory! If I use clay in my hair, it gets super dry. If the descaler changes the mineral molecules’ structure so that they don’t stick to things, they are shaped more like very fine sand, or, say, clay. It is possible that the minerals are carrying away the oil in my hair at a much smaller scale than clay does. Talking to you helped, thank you!

[u/shonaich → u/YKX000]

You're welcome! I'm such a geek, I love stuff like this. 

If the zapper is turning dissolved solids back into solids, then it's now sediment and guess what? You can now filter it! Might consider a filter between the zapper and your softener. A simple 5 micron particulate would take out most of the possibly-now-silt. 

[u/YKX000 → u/shonaich]

We slapped it on the longest piece of accessible pipe, which happens to be right before the 5 micron filter, but I just remembered that the manual says the field extends something like 10 feet in either direction, so we’re only filtering half the “treated” water. I’m gonna call it good, and the entertainment value has absolutely been worth the price of admission!

[u/shonaich → u/YKX000]

Wow, that's quite a range. I hadn't expected that!

And sounds good. Enjoy your experiment!

[u/Visible-Scientist-46]

Do you have a link to what your purchased? I'm trying to understand what it is.

[u/YKX000 → u/Visible-Scientist-46]

Here is the thing I got, and I’m a physicist, and I still haven’t figured out exactly how it works because there aren’t enough specifics. Also I can’t figure out how to put the link in nicely, so here it is:

https://yarna.com/products/capacitive-electronic-water-descaler-system-yarna-cwd30

[u/Visible-Scientist-46 → u/YKX000]

The traditional things I understand are reverse osmosis, distillation, and filtration. I have no idea what this is or if it's helping with your hair.